JournoList might be dead as far as an organized infrastructure (though I suspect it lives on in informal emails, instant messaging and texts), but the corrupt spirit of it all is alive and well, especially at Politico, where no less than three of their “journalists” were members of Ezra Klein’s now infamous JournoList: Mike Allen, Ben Smith and Lisa Lerer.

This sort of background and context is important. We can never allow ourselves to forget what these “objective” news outlets have been a part of. What we know about their past tells us everything about who they are and the deceptions and dishonesty they are capable of.

It also helps to explain Politico’s behavior when they do something like this:

Conservatives looking to delegitimize the Occupy Wall Street protests have a new tactic — targeting journalists.

That is the opening sentence of a front page Politico piece posted just this morning that looks at how those of us on the right, especially this site and Big Government, have exposed the ongoing collusion and conspiracy between members of the mainstream media and the heavily astro-turfed Occupy movements currently stinking up public parks throughout the country.

Thus far, individuals working for the New York Times, NPR, and NBC News have been caught red-handed conspiring to aid and abet a movement that these very same outlets are pushing as some kind of spontaneous uprising. In the case of the Times and NPR, the response to this exposure has resulted in action to end the obvious conflict of interest (true to form, NBC News remains shameless). And yet, in response, Politico isn’t crediting the Times and NPR with doing the right thing and they sure aren’t thanking those of us who discovered the ethical breaches for helping to police their “honorable” profession. No, in response, Politico is completely freaking out:

Taken together, these critiques may just muddy the waters enough to do some damage to both the media and the fledgling anti-Wall Street movement. But when the case is examined in isolation, it’s hard to find much of a smoking gun, though that that hasn’t stopped media organizations from reacting defensively to the charges leveled at them.

That might not sound like freaking out, but trust me, it is.

The most important point that needs to be made is that Politico can point to nothing reported by the Bigs or the Daily Caller that is in any way untrue. Moreover, what was revealed is most certainly smoking-gun conflicts of interests at the New York Times and NBC, and in the case of NPR, an obvious violation of their own code of ethics. But as we saw with Politico’s heavy involvement in JournoList and their subsequent covering up of what we now know was really going on there, ethics is not what Politico is about. They are leftists interested only in winning and, when read between the lines, the fact that this morning’s article was designed to stop the MSM bleeding becomes obvious. Why else would they declare a news outlets taking the proper action to end obvious conflicts of interests as “reacting defensively”?

Politico is telling their MSM pals that the ethical decisions they’ve made in response to reporting by conservative media (that also hand the Right “victories” and damages the Occupy movement that might be Obama’s only hope for a second term) are cowardly and will be defined as such should they continue.

This is also Politico’s way of protecting the media from further bloodletting by sending the message loud and clear that no one within the warm confines of JournoList 2.0 expects them to respond to any other conflicts that might be discovered.

Why?

Well, in this case, Politico doesn’t even try to hide their reasoning:

The cases of Ratigan and Taibbi, two outspoken liberals, are even harder to pin down when it comes to journalistic ethics.

According to emails on a private listserv leaked to Big Government, Ratigan at one point advised the Occupy Wall Street protesters on their message. …

Taibbi’s leaked email shows, in essence, a boiled down version of his article, “My Advice to the Wall Street Protesters.”

Neither is particularly surprising, considering that Ratigan has been enthusiastically covering the protests for weeks and Taibbi published a version of his email in Rolling Stone.

Ahh, common ground. Let us hold hands and come together with Politico to agree that liberals “are even harder to pin down when it comes to journalistic ethics.”

And let us also agree that it’s pretty obvious Politico is a proud member of that club.